After
42 hours of flight, following the loss of 2,600 lbs of
fuel in the early stages of the flight, Steve Fossett
has decided to cross the Pacific Ocean at least as far a
Hawaii.

Despite
the earlier loss of fuel that means Steve may possibly
not make it back to Salina, he will aim to get as far a
Hawaii where he will re-assess the situation.
Steve and Mission Control are taking one step at a time.

Steve
is nearly in daylight and will to continue have 100 knot
tailwinds assisting his flight until Hawaii. After this
point, however, the winds are expected to be only
around 40 knots, which could cause problems as Steve
needs at least 58 knots to make his fuel last all the
way in. Mission
Control have also advised Steve to slow his flight
speed down to increase overall efficiency, and to
conserve fuel.

Steve's
view was that he was still "very hopeful" of
making it back to Salina. The
pumping of fuel between tanks will continue. The wing
tip tanks have been drained and the pumping of fuel from
the mid-wing tanks is nearly complete. Sir Richard
Branson said of the situation: "I think it's too
soon to be confident that he'll make it all the way
around the world... I think by the time he reaches
Hawaii we'll have a pretty good idea of whether he'll
make it."

Fossett
flight bid on track 10:06AM

GlobalFlyer
over the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

American
adventurer Steve Fossett flew over the Middle East today
after overcoming a navigation equipment problem that
threatened to derail his historic bid to make the first
non-stop flight around the world without refuelling.
Fossett, who took off from here in the Virgin Atlantic
GlobalFlyer yesterday for a flight expected to last
between 60 and 80 hours, said he had to deal with a
number of "dramas" during takeoff but the
flight was going well overall.

At
2200 GMT (0900 AEDT Wednesday) Fossett was at 14,383
metres and had been in the air for nearly 24 hours. The
GlobalFlyer was over Egypt heading east towards Saudi
Arabia at speeds of around 630km/h. Earlier in the day,
in a radio hook-up with reporters at Mission Control in
Salina, Fossett said he had a "good chance" of
completing the record-breaking flight.He
said the takeoff of the GlobalFlyer, which is
essentially a flying gas tank - 83 per cent of the total
weight is fuel - had been difficult. "It had a lot
of dramas in the launch, dramas with equipment failures
that had to be solved," Fossett said.

"The
plane was much slower than I expected but fortunately
the plane picked up speed and I didn't have to
abort," he said. The most serious problem was
a temporary failure of the Global Positioning System, or
GPS, Fossett's satellite navigation aid.
"This was my sole source of navigation so this was
very serious," he said, adding that the GPS had not
functioned for about half of his flight over Canada.
"I believe it was an antenna problem," Fossett
said.

He
cautioned that other problems could arise and there was
still a long way to go. "There may be new things
that come up so there's no real basis for
confidence," he said, "but I'm happy with the
situation". At Mission Control, flight
controllers were carefully monitoring fuel consumption.

"One
of the critical factors we are monitoring is the amount
of fuel he has left," said project manager Paul
Moore. "He's eaten quite substantially into his
fuel (so far) but that's as we expected."
Moore said the GPS problem had been potentially fatal to
the flight. "This could have been a
showstopper," he said. "This was really a big
worry as we are unable to fly without GPS especially
when were out of radio range. "Steve was
essentially flying blind," Moore said.
"Happily, after a couple of hours of malfunction
the GPS system did reengage."

Virgin
Atlantic Global Flyer

Moore
said cabin pressure was good and the temperature in the
cramped cockpit was 18 degrees Celsius. "His feet
are a bit chilly," said Moore. The three-day
journey will test the endurance and piloting abilities
of Fossett, a 60-year-old millionaire who has set dozens
of world records and world firsts with jet aeroplanes
and gliders, hot air balloons and sailing.

At
takeoff, the 1522kg single engine aircraft was carrying
nearly 8636kg of fuel in 13 tanks for the 37,260km
journey at altitudes as high as 15,850 metres.
British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of
Virgin Atlantic Airways, is funding the GlobalFlyer and
the is part of the Mission Control team monitoring
the flight. The
GlobalFlyer was designed by aviation legend Burt Rutan,
who recently made headlines when his SpaceShipOne won
the $US10 million ($A12.73 million) "X Prize"
for sending a privately-designed craft into space twice
in two weeks.

Rutan
also designed the Voyager, which was used by his brother
Dick Rutan and Jeanne Yeager in 1986 to set a record of
nine days for a non-stop, non-refuelled flight around
the world.

Fossett
hopes to beat that record by making it in less than 80
hours, and by doing it on his own.